Notes and Insights is a forum for discussion and debate about current issues in the philosophy and application of the system dynamics approach, and a marketplace for the exchange of information about current research, policy issues, and teaching experiences. Manuscripts treating material particularly suited to presentation in short form (less than 2,000 words) should be sent to Erich Zahn, Betriebswirtschaft‐liches Institut, Abt. IV, Universitat Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, D‐7000 Stuttgart 1, Germany. Since formal modeling requires having a model boundary encompassing finite complexity so that deductive logic is possible, complex problems must be partitioned into simpler parts before being analyzed. There are many ways to slice a complex problem but not all create partitions that keep together processes contributing to effective policy design. This paper explores ways in which a complex problem may be appropriately sliced so that the models of partitions can serve as effective tools for policy design.

A generic system embodies basic principles and insights that are common to a set of diverse cases and situations. For example, a generic system called "limits to growth" captures the constraints experienced by an organization due to the scarcity of an important resource. Its manifestations range from the tragedy of Easter Island to rise and decline of People Express Airline to the spotty performance of early peer-to-peer music networks. This paper presents a new generic system that we name the dynastic cycle system. It is based on a stylized model of events from the Chinese history. It describes resource allocation between social, asocial and control uses in a variety of institutions, including political economies, markets and firms that experience cyclical behavior and homeostasis symbolizing low levels of performance. Numerical simulations with the model are used to test several policy scenarios.

This article proposes a conceptual framework for dissent dynamics in organizations. We integrate the dissent expression and management framework of Kassing with the dynamic institution composition structure of Saeed and Pavlov to construct a generic model for understanding organizational dissent. Our model hypothesizes the impact of dissent accumulation on organizational dissent climate, composition, and performance. Two performance measures comprise the performance grid to describe the current state of an organization and its dissent management policies—perceived management responsiveness and organizational productivity. We argue that dissent expression, tolerance, and management policies affect whether an organization is high or low performing. The conceptual model provides a future platform for experimentation and learning by simulating different policy scenarios and their influence on the paths of change and the new homeostasis eventually achieved by the organization.

We propose a generic model that explains why political systems tend toward certain outcomes. The model identifies possible economic and psychological paths toward change in a metaphorical political economy consisting of farmers, bandits and soldiers. In addition to economic factors, we also consider how two psychological factors, broadly categorized as group identity and exposure to violence, affect the behavior of metaphorical agents. We find that though outcomes tend to be similar with and without the psychological influences, the psychological influences accelerate the adjustment process and create additional policy space for interventions. A methodological contribution of the paper also is the use of summary performance measures represented as phase plots that have the potential to be used with advantage in system dynamics analyses. Copyright © 2014 System Dynamics Society

Accelerating the rate of economic growth in developing countries has been an important aim of almost all development policies implemented over the past three decades. Experience has shown that such growth is often not sustainable and is likely to be interrupted by violent political changes. This paper attempts to identify the organizational factors that limit economic growth and create conditions conducive to the outbreak of political violence. A system dynamics model of the sociopolitical organization of a developing country is presented, and the model's behavior is studied using computer simulation.